Rich Fisher

Trenton, NJ — Around 20 years ago Dominik Miga was on a job in Cream Ridge, N.J., for his fledgling business, Miga Construction. During a break, the young entrepreneur sat on the roof with some of his crew and gazed out over the bucolic landscape.

Off in the distance, he noticed a farm with a track, and people bringing out horses with carts. He was informed that they were training them for racing.

“I’m sitting on that roof and I’m saying, ‘Oh my God is this even possible?’” Miga recalled. “This is only 20 minutes away from (the capital city of) Trenton and these guys have horses and they’re making a living. I just looked up at the sky and said, ‘God is this possible you can make money this way, you can really do this?’”

As time went on, the Polish immigrant didn’t think much more about it. But 10 years ago, he had another job in Cream Ridge, putting shingles on a new elementary school. Living in Trenton at the time, Miga was impressed by what the new school and the town around it had to offer. He convinced his wife Julia that it was where they should raise their young family.

While driving around the country roads, they saw a house for sale that they liked and immediately bought it.

This is where the story gets good.

“I found out that my backyard neighbors own the farm that I originally saw from the roof 10 years before that,” Miga said of Starlight Farm. “I wasn’t trying to find that place, I had forgotten all about it. And then the house I bought is actually right behind where I said, ‘God is it possible for me to do this one day?’ I was like ‘Wow! We’re going to get horses and I’m going to try to do what I asked for so many years ago.”

Ideal Suspect gave Dominik Miga his first career training win on Feb. 6 at Freehold Raceway. Photo courtesy of Dominik Miga.

Flash forward five years and Miga broke his first horse — male pacer Ideal Suspect — on that track. Flash forward again, to Feb. 6 of this year, when that same horse gave Dominik his first career training win at Freehold Raceway.

“That was a very exciting thing for me,” Miga said.

And at times it felt like it would never happen.

Miga bought Ideal Suspect at 3-months-old along with his mother, Sweet Celebration, who was carrying another foal at the time. “It was a three-in-one package,” he said.

That got Dominik involved in breeding, but he found it difficult to sell the horses he bred because he wanted to train them. He has eventually pared down his stable to five horses and has putting breeding on the backburner for now. He began training last year.

“I just want to train horses,” he said. “It feels so good to go fast.”

Of the five he trains, only Ideal Suspect is racing. He started at age 2, but Miga began training him last year. The horse’s success was slow in coming under Dominik until he found the right man for the sulky. He didn’t have far to look, as Jack Pelling lives just a few doors down the road.

“It seemed like I was doing so well on the track training, but then when it came to racing, he didn’t perform the same way,” Miga said. “When I got Jack Pelling on the horse it all changed. I feel totally different training the horse and it seems like he goes totally different when he’s on the racetrack with Jack driving. Jack is good at keeping me informed, and making the horse relaxed.

“The first time he drove the horse he kind of got to know him a little better and he turned in a better time. The problem with the horse is he’s very aggressive. He pulls, it’s scary to kind of follow or have him in the hole. But that’s what Jack learned the first drive he had, and the second one was a win.”

It was an easy win at that, as Pelling got the 5-year-old gelding out quickly and won by six lengths.

“He just jumped in and without any worries he took the horse to the finish line, leaving everybody behind,” Miga said. “It was totally unbelievable after having so many tries and failures.

“I was there with my son (18-year-old Paskal), that made it even more special. We were standing in that booth there at the backstretch and we just couldn’t keep quiet. We started yelling. We were very excited and couldn’t believe the day actually came.”

It didn’t take long to get a second win, which came the very next time the horse raced at Freehold.

“We’ve qualified at The Meadowlands and qualified at (Harrah’s Philadelphia),” Miga said. “But Freehold is the place for now until we get a little more confident.”

Confidence comes with experience and Miga is admittedly still learning the ropes.

Dominik Miga is currently training five horses. Photo courtesy of Dominik Miga.

Growing up in the city of Mielec, Poland, just a few hours outside of Krakow, Dominik was exposed to horses at his grandparents’ farm.

“My grandfather had me on horseback while he was plowing,” he said. “I remember taking trips to the fields to pick out potatoes, or whatever, with the horse and carriage.”

But as far as horse racing went, “I had no interest in horse racing because I didn’t know such a thing existed.”

After moving to America, Miga attended Lawrence High School just outside of Trenton, but dropped out after his junior year to work for a roofing company. Two years later he started his own successful business and has never looked back.

Since running one’s own business takes time, the 41-year-old can only tend to his horses on a steady basis during the winter months when construction slows down.

“After April I usually give them to somebody to look after,” he said. “Now I’m hoping my son can do this since he’s in college and doing everything online. He’s there every morning with me, very interested in it and maybe looking to be a driver. He’s enjoying it.”

Miga has come a long way since first starting and is appreciative to numerous people who have helped him get this far.

“Everybody at White Birch Farm is so great to me,” he said. “I can go up to any of them, ask them a question, ask them their opinion. They’re more than welcome to kind of give me their opinion and then I figure out what’s going to work for me.”

Speaking of work, despite the fact he loves the horses, Miga will continue to run his business “because I have to do what I have to do to support my family.”

He has no long-range plan when it comes to harness racing and is just cherishing it as often as he can for now.

“It’s very hard to plan anything with horses because you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring,” Miga said. “I’m just enjoying it every day. Every day I’m here in the morning and if I can hop on a horse before I go to work then it’s a good day right there.

“After I come back home, I always come and see them, make sure they are feeling good. It’s a great day whenever I’m doing it.”

The kind of days he imagined when looking out from that rooftop over two decades ago.